The California Building Standards Law provides for the adoption of building standards by state agencies by requiring all state agencies that adopt or propose adoption of any building standard to submit the building standard to the California Building Standards Commission for approval and adoption.
Existing law requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to propose the adoption, amendment, or repeal of building standards to the commission relating to hotels, motels, lodging houses, apartment houses, and dwellings, and the buildings and structures accessory thereto, except as specified.
Existing law authorizes a city or county to make changes or modifications in the building standards proposed by the department and approved by the commission, to provide for local variances relating to local climatic, geological, or topographical conditions, upon making certain
findings and filing those findings with the commission.
This bill would require the department, at the next triennial building standards rulemaking cycle that commences on or after January 1, 2009, to adopt and submit to the commission for approval building standards for the construction, installation, and alteration of graywater, as defined, systems for indoor and outdoor uses. The bill would terminate the authority of the Department of Water Resources to adopt graywater standards for residential buildings upon the approval by the commission of the standards submitted under the bill.
The bill would authorize a city, county,
or other local agency to adopt, after a public hearing and enactment of an ordinance or resolution, building standards that prohibit entirely the use of graywater, or building standards that are more restrictive than the graywater building standards adopted by the department and published in the California Building Standards Code.